At the end of the 20th century, Agnès, a 34-year-old single woman who lived in a beautiful house, would soon die of uterine cancer. Her sister Karin stood by her dying bed with Maria and the maid Anna. The walls, carpets, and bed curtains in the house are all red, a mixture of death, memories, and dreams, while the sheets, shirts, and underwear of the women are white. "This is a tragedy of clothing." Jean-Louis Bori wrote. Then came the black funeral, the men's black suits, the black shadows and the night. Only in the diary of Agnès, which recorded the past, the green, cool garden was revealed. Between the four colors of the room and the faces of the four women, Agnès's breath became weaker and weaker. In her diary, she recalled: when she was a child, the pain caused by the departure of her mother; the first time she watched the magic light show; the rejection and jealousy between sisters; and the happiness brought by the caress and smile.
The doctor David came to visit and announced that the patient's days were running out. The film flashes back to the encounter between Mary and David. Mary is a blonde and sexy girl who likes to have fun. David was once her lover. Mary's husband attempted suicide. Anna held Agnès, who had experienced terrible spasms, in her arms to comfort her and changed her clothes. Agnès began to read "Mr. Pickwick's Adventures," but the pain became more and more intense. Agnès shouted: "Help me!" Death finally solidified her sight. The tears of the sisters, the grooming before the funeral, the prayers of the priest. Memories of Karin and her older husband-Karin didn't like her husband touching her and cut her own sex organs with broken glass. Maria likes to be touched, which makes Karin feel sick. There is a conflict between the two. Then, in tears and smiles, they touched each other's faces that became beautiful in Bach's cello music.
Anna, who heard the cry, approached the dying Agnès. She couldn't sleep and felt cold. She called to her sisters, but they ignored her, only Anna comforted her with the voice of a cello. After the funeral, the two sisters and their husbands took charge of everything. They asked Anna, who was no longer useful, to find a new job elsewhere. They gave her Añez’s diary and a banknote. The two sisters broke up coldly, and Maria had forgotten that she had had such an intimate communication with Karin. Anna opened Agnès' diary and read it. The moment of happiness that illuminates the patient appears on the screen. In the garden near autumn, the three sisters and Anna ride in a hammock together, the bell rang, and a sentence appeared on the screen: "This will drown out the shouts and whispers."
Watching this movie is an experience of beauty, feelings and contemplation. It brings us face-to-face with death and the heart-to-heart communication under the action of death. No one can get out of the movie unharmed. Movies have created or exposed wounds to people, and this is the mystery of the seventh art. With the sound of the pendulum, time pitted its persistent and regular ticking against the breath of failure, call signs, and suffocation. Moving forward in a time of despair is the real test: to lift up the masks, illusions and illusions of the soul. Death changed and refused all restraint. Agnès walked into death and was left to analyze. She did not realize that she had brought her sister into this situation. "Cry and Whisper" is the road to the other shore. What makes a smile today is not the imagination of hell, heaven or purgatory. In the other side of images and appearances, life remains the same.
Agnès has almost no mirror, only the writing in the diary reflects her pain and happiness. Bergman used color images to show the diary in black and white, making the images an echo of writing. When meeting with the fascinating Maria again, David stripped her out in front of the mirror; before Karin destroyed her body, she took off her clothes in front of the mirror and yelled: "Everything is a lie. Get up!" She couldn't bear Anna's silent eyes, so she slapped her in the face. The mirror is a place to meet the narcissistic self, but cannot withstand the offensive of the truth. The mirror and makeup reflect no more attractive images, but hatred, wounds, and secret disappointments, as well as the inability to love each other. Fear and fear.
On the road connecting reality and fantasy, Bergman's bravery reached its peak in the encounter with death. The dying Agnès wept like a child, Anna heard it, and comforted her: "It's just a dream." But Agnès replied, "No, this is not a dream! It may be a dream for you, but not for me. !" How much she longed for the warmth from her sisters. The time has come for judgment and truth to be revealed. No matter who it is, no one can live "still in the mirror" anymore. Both Karin and Maria, who are about to undergo the test of tenderness, only know that they refuse to poison life in their revelation. "I don't love you. It's disgusting!" Karin yelled coldly, facing contact, she always retreated out of fear. "Children, when we are afraid, we hug each other..." Maria eager to touch said, but the word of love was out of the body-when Agnès' hand touched her face, she yelled and frightened. Escaped. Only the silent Anna was left. Her child died when she was very young. She was not afraid. In order to warm and comfort the dying person, she exposed her chest and hugged the deceased as she did with her child. In the arms. This scene is very like a statue of the Virgin holding a dead baby and shaking a newborn. The off-white sheets and skin, like the white marble in the hands of Michelangelo in the Vatican, became a giving under Bergman’s carving knife. A statue of a mother of warmth, peace and love. A flesh and blood creature gives the dead the power to pass through death, and only love can do this. The miracle of love is as powerful as the one displayed by Dreyer. "Shouting and Whispering" is also a work of words about love, which leads us to experience physical intimacy and physical pain.
Bergman raised the body as a problem, looking for burning love in it. The movie uses extremely realism to show the scenes of the other side. Bergman has not forgotten to borrow the power of dreams to reveal the truth: if there is no real tender action, all the words of love are false, they are just covering up Fear and hatred made the face of death terrifying. "Screaming and Whispering" presents a picture that reflects the middle-class society and hierarchical relationship, and is a description of physical illness. Once again, we see a closed space in which women without men are seduced by "dizziness caused by homosexuality and incest" or pure rhetorical games. Bergman emphasized that he tried to show the image of his mother through the women in white in the red room. He said that this red embodies something inside, namely the soul, which sneaks into the womb of love, like production. The blood shed at the time. Jean Kohler commented that the death of Agnès, whose abdomen was enlarged due to cancer, was like a painful birth. But Bergman also said that Anna's name comes from the "Bible" and she is the incarnation of the love of the gospel. "She instinctively brings love and tenderness to others. Her love fully embodies the spirit of the Apostolic Letter to the Corinthians. In my opinion, this is very important."
The love described by St. Paul-once used as the cornerstone of "Still in the Mirror" and "Face to Face"-is love that is completely unrequited, without the slightest narcissism, and even brings some kind of transformation to the body. Jean-Lup Pasek also said: "This is a movie that fights for love (to take off all the masks of love, to reconcile gentle and sexy love). It is the only thing that can contend with lonely death. "He then said: "Bergman only claimed that death is a passage, a corridor... He dared to claim that communication between people will not be stopped by the death of the body. Only when love gives it real meaning. , True salvation can be meaningful.... The image of death will not triumph, but life will triumph over everything."
The movie begins with the women's awakening. Agnès has no regrets. She writes, winds the clock, and looks at the garden with the eyes of her artist and painter; Maria lies on the bed, sucking her thumb, and a doll lies beside her; Karin checks the accounts , Thinking in pain; Anna prayed, Mireille Amiel pointed out that she had the simplicity of the poor who believe in the gospel. If red is reminiscent of blood, spilled red wine, shame or excitement. With a flush of redness on the cheeks, a sick body or a bleeding heart, what people see in Anna is a burning flame. At the beginning of the film, she blows the dust on the coffin cover and ignites the charcoal shining with the fire. The simplest and most common act is the source of power and beauty in the film. What Anna exhales is the breath of warmth and love that passes through death. Bergman imprinted on this kindness, and recorded this rare happiness. The only thing that can overcome eternal time is this moment, which is home and the flame of love.
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